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First of all, I want to reiterate why I wasn’t able to engage in this conversation earlier. I was attending a board meeting this weekend and did not want to begin a conversation I could not participate in. Comment moderation is a struggle at Feministing and I wanted to be present and able to do that moderation. This conversation, both about commenting and about gender variance and feminism is really important to me and all of us at Feministing. We are commited to continuing these conversations and finding the spaces for positive dialogue.
In the meantime, the discussion has continued on the community blog. I am really appreciative that members of the Feministing community are willing to engage in this conversation, and provide diverse perspectives.Because of the difficulty of moderating all these conversations simultaneously, we’re shutting down comments on the individual posts and redirecting everyone to comment on this thread where we can actively moderate.
I’m going to do a round-up of the community posts here:Josh T. wrote about cisgender and transfeminists, what we have in common and why we should work together.
Kyriarchy wrote 5 tips on how to talk to trans people.
mindprovender wrote about Entitlement in comment threads.
Rachel Seltzer wrote a post called Play Nice or Get Out about gender, feminism and engagement.
Jessica94 wrote 5 Things I’ve Learned About Respectful and Productive Commenting with more thoughts on how to be a good commenter.
Zyfron wrote Thoughts on Trans Safe Space and Activism.
Obviously this is a conversation we are all invested in. We at Feministing want to find better ways to keep comment threads under control. We also want to promote dialogue and conversation about issues like gender and race, and other very heated, very personal issues that are central to feminism and feminist dialogue.
We absolutely recognize that our comment section is not always a safe space for a lot of people. We take this really seriously and it’s a constant conversation for us. We have some time dedicated during our next Feministing in-person meeting in May to talk more and strategize about how to address this. In the next few weeks we’re going to have a forum for feedback from all of you about this as well.
Our comment policy is here, and any comments that are offensive or in violation of that policy will be deleted.

Last week, Monica Potts wrote a piece in The New Republic initially entitled “Trans Activism is Threatening Women’s Colleges’ Mission: Campus fights to erase references to women are indistinguishable from old-school misogyny” and then, after lots of pushback, changed to: “Why Women’s Colleges Still Matter in the Age of Transactivism.”

Regardless of the new headline, the piece does indeed argue that trans activism is threatening the mission of women’s colleges. The sum total of the evidence amassed to support this assertion is theNew York Times Magazine article from last year about trans men at Wellesley demanding recognition and the fact that students at Mount Holyoke cancelled a production of The Vagina Monologues last month, deciding that it ...

Last week, Monica Potts wrote a piece in The New Republic initially entitled “Trans Activism is Threatening Women’s Colleges’ Mission: Campus fights to erase references to women are indistinguishable from old-school misogyny” and then, after lots ...

A Northeastern University professor has created an interactive chart that reveals the gendered biases in students’ evaluations of their profs on RateMyProfessors.com. You can input any word — like, say, “genius” or “bossy” — and see how often it’s used by gender and academic department.

To continue with those examples, take a wild guess about how those two words broke down. Here are the results for “genius”:

And for “bossy”:

As the The Upshot sums up: “Men are more likely to be described as a star, knowledgeable, awesome or the best professor. Women are more likely to be described as bossy, disorganized, helpful, annoying or as playing favorites. Nice or rude are also more often used to describe women than men.” I’m sure if you spend ...

A Northeastern University professor has created an interactive chart that reveals the gendered biases in students’ evaluations of their profs on RateMyProfessors.com. You can input any word — like, say, “genius” or “bossy” — and see how often it’s ...

After 4-and-a-half years of legal battle for firing a warning shot into a wall in self-defense against her abusive husband, Marissa Alexander is expected to be released from jail today, though she’ll likely remain under house arrest for two more years — which, as Maya Schenwar notes, means “she won’t be free.”

Activists from FORCE: Upsetting Rape Culture and the Free Marissa Now campaign have teamed up to ensure that when Alexander arrives for her sentencing hearing at the Duval County Courthouse in Jacksonville, she’ll be greeted by messages of solidarity from other domestic violence survivors across the country.

“350 quilt squares containing stories from survivors of domestic violence and sexual assault will blanket the Duval County ...

After 4-and-a-half years of legal battle for firing a warning shot into a wall in self-defense against her abusive husband, Marissa Alexander is expected to be released from jail today, though she’ll likely remain under house ...